Bulbapedia:Advertising

Keeping Bulbagarden online costs a significant amount, and it is only by generous donations that we are able to foot the bill. We hope to decrease our reliance on charity by publishing advertisements on Bulbapedia, which is the single largest site on the server in traffic terms. Specifically, we are proposing the publication of GoogleAdSense advertisements in the site-wide notice area.

We have refrained from doing so in the past because people are not drawn to Bulbapedia for its community, as is the case with the Bulbagarden forums, but for its content. Bulbapedia is a Web 2.0 site, therefore its content is created by its users - and to that degree it is also owned by its users, as opposed to other reference sites like Veekun or Smogon, where content is created by the staff. To monetize user-created content can be considered unethical - as one cynic put it, "Web 2.0: you make all the content, we make all the money."

Therefore, we have decided to consult you, the creators of content, on this matter. Naturally, votes will be weighted to reflect the number of edits the voter has made. Please cast your vote by adding your signature (~~~~) to the end of the signature lists below. All registered users may vote once to:

Support the publication of Google AdSense advertisements on Bulbapedia

All other votes will be weighted so that the total weight is 30, provided at least 30 users not in the above list cast their votes, i.e. if 60 users other than the ones above vote, then the weight on each of their votes will be 0.5; otherwise the votes will have weight 1.